tral power in Constantinople had often on its own initiative influenced intellectual progress; for example, by the despatch of Byzantine workmen, of whose nationality we are unfortunately ignorant. In many cases this transmission of culture was only rendered possible through the strong imperial power.

(B) Byzantine Influences on Armenia. Just as the influence of Byzantinism on the Arabic world came first from Syria, so the Syrian transmission of culture paved the way for the influence of Byzantium on Armenia. The main conceptions of Western civilization, political imperialism (Armenian kaisr = xaîoap) and religious martyrdom (Armenian maturn=μaprúρiov), may have already reached the Armenians directly from the sphere of Greek civilization, so that there was an early intercourse with Greece in the first three centuries; but Syria supplied the most essential links in the chain.

The founder of the Armenian Church, Grigor Lûsavorič (cf. Vol. IV, p. 217), united it to the Syrian ritual, employed, as Moses of Khorene tells us, Syrian letters for the Armenian language, and nominated the Syrian David as superintendent of all the bishops. Even when we disallow the alleged Syrian origin of the Armenian creed, there remains sufficient to attest the Syrian religious influences, since it is dependent on the pseudo-Athanasian creed. Among the schools attended by young Armenians, Edessa, owing to its accessibility and its splendid library, was given the preference over Constantinople and Alexandria. Monasteries and episcopal palaces were founded in Armenia by Syrians; numerous Syrian writings were translated into Armenian; and Syrian patriarchs stand at the head of the Armenian Church, even though not universally recognised; Syrian bishops are found in Armenia down to the sixth century. Art products, Syrian miniatures, were introduced into Armenia. The miniatures in the Etchmiadsin Gospel-book in the details of the ornamentation (in the employment of plants, and of birds on the sides of a vase) as well as in the representation of scriptural types (in the Message to Zachariah, the Annunciation, Baptism of Christ) are so closely connected with the Syrian Bible of the monk Rabula of 586, that we must assume an older Syrian copy.

Both in politics and in culture Armenia was for a long time less closely connected with Byzantium than with the Byzantine province of Syria. An alliance had certainly been concluded in 323 between the founder of Constantinople and Khosrow II, the son of Trdat the Great. But Valens soon found it more advantageous to make common cause with the Persians (Shapur II) against Armenia (374). The Armenians, who were subject to Byzantine dominion, may have no longer required the Syrian alphabet. But the national union of the Armenian people took place under the auspices of Byzantium. A national Armenian alphabet was designed by the holy Mesrob († February 19, 441, properly Masthots) in Syrian Samosata. Six pupils of the Armenian Catholicus came in 432-433 to Constantinople, in order to master the Greek language. It is possibly the case that, when the Catholicus Sahak (384-386) wished to collect also the Armenians of the West for this national propaganda, a refusal was received from the Byzantine governors. The protest of the Catholicus, and the answer of the emperor, who had countenanced the acceptance of the Armenian alphabet, are preserved in Moses of Khorene, but can hardly be genuine. The consciousness of the necessity for a transmission of culture triumphed over conflicting political and religious interests.

The Armenians borrowed from the Greek almost all their written literature and their church music; in recognition of this intellectual dependence, the emperor Theodosius II and his all-powerful sister Pulcheria († 453) gave these zealous translators both literary and financial help.

The Armenian patriarchs were educated in " Greece," that is to say, in Byzantium. Giut (patriarch from 465-475) emphasises his intellectual dependence on Byzantium, whence he obtained his material requirements, such as clothes. It is recorded of Nerses III (640-661) that he had been educated in Greece. At least two churches and one monastery had been built by Justinian in Armenia, and others restored; and in the post-Justinian era the chief church of Etchmiadsin with its cupolas had been erected; Nerses III even later built a church in the vicinity of the town of Walarchapat, of which some pillars are still erect and show his monogram. These capitals exhibit the corbel of Justinian's age, but Ionic flutings in place of the Byzantine animals, a renaissance, as it were, of older Greek ideas in a Byzantine setting. Even towards the middle of the eighth century, in a disquisition on the question of admitting images into the churches, we find the emphatic statement that, even in the domain of painting, all productions can be traced to the Greeks, "from which source we have everything." It is true that national hatred prevailed for centuries between Armenians and Greeks, so that under the emperor Heraclius († 641) the armies would not encamp side by side; and Byzantine proverbs declared that no worse foe existed than an Armenian friend, while the talented historian Casia drew an alarming picture of the Armenian national character. Yet the influence of Byzantium on Armenian literature and architecture, and the importation of images from that source, give the keynote to the relations between the two nations.

Armenian courtiers, Armenian officers, Armenians in the administrative and the legislative departments at Byzantium had, by correspondence with their homes and their relations, opened a hundred channels through which that higher civilization, as expressed in language, flowed into Armenia. Greek words crowded first into the learned language of Armenia; meteorological phenomena were called by Greek names, so, too, were minerals; mathematics, astronomy, chronology, jurisprudence required to borrow words from Greek. Expressions for the business of Church and State were to a large extent first adopted by the learned class. But soon popular borrowings must have co-operated in that direction, and with the words for man, his qualities and occupations, and for the ideas of nature, town, and country, money, weights and measures, house and home, dress and ornament, arts and games, a strong Greek element was introduced into the Armenian language.

(7) Byzantine Influences on Caucasia and Persia. - Armenian influences first brought Byzantine culture nearer to the Caucasian nations; the Georgians-like the Bulgarians, Servians, Russians, Wallachians-adopted the Greek church music, both vocal and instrumental. The princes of independent tribes were proud of Byzantine titles, as, for instance, the prince of the warlike Alani in the Caucasus, on whom by the favour of Byzantium the title of Mighty Sovereign was conferred; others were styled Archons. Thus here, too, in the East a wide sphere of Byzantine influence was created, which was in many ways, not all of them superficial, imbued with a higher civilization.

L

Notwithstanding the strong inclination of individual Persian kings towards

Western civilization, the effect on Persia of any special Byzantine, as apart from Greek and Roman, influences can as yet hardly be demonstrated. It has, indeed, been long observed that the palace of the Sassanids at Ctesiphon, which dates from Khosrav I (Vol. III, p. 287), as far as the construction of the façade and the mural decoration are concerned, displays the same round-arched arcades and pilasters as Diocletian's palace, and that the goldsmith's art has remodelled Roman motifs; thus, a dish shows an Eros playing the lyre seated on a lion, but in Oriental dress. But these influences are in reality so universal that it is better to speak of a transmission of the late antique. At most, the trapeziumshaped capitals may be traced back to Byzantium, while the acanthus decoration on a capital at Ispahan still shows the Hellenistic form.

(b) For the West. It seems difficult to investigate the early influence of Byzantine culture on the West. So long as the belief prevailed that Old Roman or "Old Christian" art alone fructified the West, it was impossible to submit the monuments to an unbiassed examination. Since we know that Greco-Oriental influences were at work in the West, even before they were transmitted by Byzantium, the "Byzantine" question becomes more complicated. Nevertheless we may consider in this connection the influences of individual Oriental spheres of the Byzantine Empire, so far as they have not been already discussed in dealing with the importance of Syria.

Byzantium and the states of the West bear towards each other in matters of culture the same relation as the left to the right lobe of the brain, or the right to the left half of the body, which are very differently provided with blood. On the one side, we have states which laboriously extricate themselves from the effects of the national migrations and the fall of the West Roman Empire; rustic populations with isolated towns and no commerce; nations which by hard struggles try to build up their own constitution on the ruins of the Roman Empire; monarchies which can alone supply this want, but cannot make head against the conditions of the age; aspects of development which cannot yet create any advanced culture. On the other side is a polity which, after the institution of the genuinely Germanic empire of the Lombards on West Roman soil, appears as the sole heir of immemorial traditions of world-empire; an empire which alone could follow out an imperial policy as distinct from the momentous and yet locally restricted conflicts of the Germanic empires; a well-organised bureaucracy, based on the practical experience of centuries of political existence; a community which possesses a capital of unparalleled magnificence, numerous flourishing cities, and a well-organised commerce, embracing the whole civilized world, which has absorbed all the refinement of Hellenistic Roman and Oriental culture; a church in which were exemplified all the principal types of religious organisation; a communion in which all the struggles for the settlement of church dogmas have been fought out with passionate obstinacy. On this side the Germanic States; on that, Byzantium.

(a) The Influences of Church and State. Whether the Frankish coins are stamped with the name of Tiberius and Mauricius, whether the envoys of the emperor Anastasius confers on Clovis (Chlodowig) the consular title, and thus promotes him to be the lawful ruler over his Roman subjects, or whether the negotiations of Tiberius bring treasure and revenue to Chilperich and Gundobad,

after

the Great Alex-

or Lombard dukes undertake to assume Byzantine dress,- Byzantium always appears as the old and wealthy civilized power face to face with the poor upstart. The last will of the emperor Mauricius, who divided the East and Italy-with Rome as capital - among his sons, may have been only a dream of the old worldpolicy; but assuredly Byzantium was not content with idle dreaming. The great landowning families of Italy, from whom sprang the commanders of the Byzantine castles, the Tribunes, - saw in Byzantium the sun of all civilization; the severance of the provinces of Lower Italy and Sicily, which were now more strongly Grecised, and so had entered on a completely divergent development, met the wishes of their ruling classes. Naples as the port for Rome, and Ravenna, as the centre of Byzantine administration, are the great gates by which Byzantine influence enters Italy; in this connection Istria may be reckoned as a thoroughly Byzantine region, within which religious ideas, political organisation, and art (the cathedral at Parenzo) show the closest affinity with Byzantium. Marseilles, on the contrary, retained its old Oriental connections, and directly transmitted to Western Europe the influences of Syria and Egypt. So also did Montpellier in a less degree.

Byzantine administration, the head of which in Italy, the Exarch of Ravenna, received his instructions in Greek, helped much to spread Greek influence. Still more effective were religious ideas and the influence of the clergy and the monks. We must realise that, while in Ravenna during the first four centuries only Syrian bishops are found, in Rome the number of Greeks and Syrians among the Popes of the seventh and the first half of the eighth centuries is extraordinarily large: Boniface III (606-607), Theodore (642-649), Agathon (678– 681), Leo III (682-683), Conon (686-687), John VI (701-705), John VII (705-707), Zacharias (741-752), are Greeks; John V (685-686), Sergius (687701), Sisinnius (708), Constantine (708-715), Gregory III (731-741), are Syrians. Greco-Oriental monasticism spread first over Central and Southern Italy, and conquered further regions of the Christian world. The Greek Theodore of Tarsus, from 669 onwards, reformed the Anglo-Saxon Church, and transmitted a rich civilization to England; and in France, as in Italy, this Greek spirit had much effect on the construction and the decoration of the churches. The Greek bank of the Tiber (Ripa Græca), the Greek school at Santa Maria in Schola Græca (later in Cosmedin), and the founding of the monastery of San Silvestro in capite by Pope Paul I (757-767), where Greek church-music flourished, may suffice as illustrations of Hellenistic influence in ecclesiastical and commercial spheres. The foreign trade of Byzantium also contributed largely to the spread of the GrecoByzantine culture. In this connection the Syrians, who, according to Gregory of Tours, mostly spoke Greek, may be regarded as disseminators of Byzantine civilization.

(B) The Influences of Art and Artistic Workmanship. The fresher vitality of the East, which had formerly forced Constantine to Orientalise the empire, soon dominated everything in Rome itself. The motifs of Oriental art are to be seen in the mosaics of Santa Maria Maggiore towards the middle of the fourth century, and in the marvellously carved wooden door of the Church of Santa Sabina, which shows the Syrian conception of the crucifixion; finally, also in the transept of the basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli, which Eudoxia commanded to be built in

442. The old Byzantine art had then firmly planted itself everywhere in Italy. The arts and crafts of Constantinople enjoyed so excellent a reputation that the bishop of Siponto, a kinsman of the emperor Zeno, sent to Constantinople for artists "especially skilled" in architecture. At Ravenna, Byzantine craftsmen were employed as early as the time of Galla Placidia (see the illustration in Vol. IV, p. 470). The building operations of Narses and Belisarius in Italy (the bridge over the Anio on the Via Salaria Nova, the Xenodocheion on the Via Lata, and the monastery of San Juvenale at Orte) were certainly carried out by Byzantine workmen. The cycle of mosaics of San Vitale at Ravenna, begun after 539, was executed under the immediate influence of Justinian, in order to glorify the dual nature of Christ (cf. above, p. 42), and in special illustration of a biblical line of thought which was, undoubtedly, of Oriental origin, and found in the West its most brilliant representative in Ambrosius of Milan. The churches of Ravenna reveal to us the importance of Byzantium as linking East and West; these Chinese tessellated patterns, which developed from woven fabrics into mural decorations, appear here just as in the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and in Thessalonica.

The palace of Theodoric in Pavia was built after a model in Ravenna. On the other hand, there is less Byzantine architecture in Aix-la-Chapelle than was formerly supposed. The equestrian statue of Theodoric, the marble mosaics, the classical reliefs, came to Aix-la-Chapelle directly from Ravenna, and the palace forecourt (Chalke) is found in Aix-la-Chapelle just as in Ravenna and Constantinople; in fact the hall which runs through this forecourt has retained its name (Cortinea). But the once prevalent idea of the imitation of Byzantine or Ravennese models in the Cathedral of Aix-la Chapelle has become quite untenable. What is still left after the convincing achievements of Joseph Strzygowski, which demonstrate direct Oriental motives and point out the astonishing resemblance to Weranshehr in Mesopotamia! No one will wish to assert that the iconostasis and the galleries are actually Byzantine. A certain eclecticism, which shows itself in the employment of a Byzantine motif in the northeastern screen of the upper story and the panels of the arcades, cannot be termed any predilection for Byzantine designs. Anything that is Oriental must have penetrated the west of Europe by a direct route, that is, by way of Marseilles. The basilica with double choir, such as is found at Erment in Upper Egypt, Baalbec in Syria, and Orléansville in Algeria, appears in Brittany (St. Malo). The circular chapel in Erment, in the Schenute monastery at Sohag as in Tours, the circular basilica in Roccella di Squillace in Calabria and in Sicily, are products of Oriental influence transmitted by the Byzantine Empire, but form no universal current of Byzantine art.

On the other hand, clothing, court manners, minor arts, and tapestry were affected both in the West and at the court of Charlemagne by Byzantium itself. Byzantine gilding at the court of Charles is praised in the poem of Angilbert addressed to Charles, while the Byzantine custom of guarding the women is mentioned by Theodulf. The throne of Charles at his tomb in Aix-la-Chapelle is thoroughly in keeping with the Byzantine gold-plate style. A four-sided wooden platform covered with metal and studded with jewels, also a portable altar (a wooden frame overlaid with plates of gilded lead) show this style of facing. The Byzantine origin of the inlaid tables mentioned by Einhard cannot be asserted with equal certainty. Oriental carpets and silk stuffs were exported in quantities